Fatal police confrontations in 2012

Feb. 23, 2012 (Palm Desert)A Riverside County sheriff’s deputy spotted three men running in dark clothing from the Desert Fountains apartment complex in the 77-800 block of Michigan Drive after a report of a burglary. One of the men — Frank Tanuvasa, who was 6 feet, 6 inches tall and more than 400 pounds — punched the deputy, dislocating his shoulder, and dragged the deputy to the ground, the sheriff’s department said. When the 20-year-old tried to take the deputy’s gun from his holster, investigators said, the deputy grabbed his gun and shot Tanuvasa once in the chest. The Riverside County District Attorney has been unable to provide the status of their review of this case. May 21, 2012 (CHP in Indio)Robert Shirar, 32, of Orange crashed his truck on I-10 near Jefferson Street sometime early May 21. Two California Highway Patrol officers found Shirar underneath the nearby overpass about 5 a.m. He put his hands in his pockets and refused orders to take them out, according to the investigative reports. Shirar told the officer that he better shoot him before he shot the officer, then moved toward the officer, the reports continued. An officer shot Shirar seven times. Indio police investigated the shooting, and spokesman Ben Guitron said he expects to present their findings to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office for review by the end of January. June 27, 2012 (Indio)Karl Watson, 47, of Palm Desert attacked Ana Maria Gonzales, fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend in her car outside an Indio apartment complex. Moments later, he shot at a responding Indio police officer, who returned fire, Indio police said. During a violent struggle, the two fought over one of the guns and Watson struck the officer in the face with it, authorities said. A second officer ran into the parking lot, saw the fight and fatally shot Watson, police said. The Riverside County District Attorney has been unable to provide the status of their review of this case. Oct. 2, 2012 (Palm Springs)Joshua Sznaider, 27, was first spotted climbing a tree in the 500 block of South Sunrise Way, Palm Springs police said. He then ran down the street, weaving in and out of traffic, before darting into the lobby of an assisted-living facility, investigators said. Officers intercepted Sznaider in the street, but he “violently resisted” arrest and struggled with officers on the ground while a witness tried to help police, a sergeant said. One officer deployed his Taser in a drive stun — or direct contact with the man’s skin — a single time, police said. Sznaider stopped breathing, was taken to a hospital and died five days later. The Riverside County coroner has not released a cause of death. The Riverside County District Attorney has been unable to provide the status of their review of this case. Nov. 10, 2012 (Palm Springs)Marine Cpl. Allan DeVillena, 22, and Pfc. Clint Harris, then 23, were celebrating the Marine Corps birthday in downtown Palm Springs when they were briefly stopped on a public intoxication complaint. The same officers, who were on routine bicycle patrol, found the men again about 2 a.m. that Saturday when they heard yelling from inside the Indian Canyon Drive parking ramp after bars closed. Ignoring the officers’ demands to stop, DeVillena climbed behind the wheel of a car, then hit one officer with his car while a second officer hung out of the passenger-side window trying to stop him, Palm Springs police said. Both officers shot him, striking him at least four times. Palm Springs police and the the Riverside County District Attorney continue their investigations into the shooting.

The legal standard

A Supreme Court ruling set the standard for when an officers’ use of force is considered excessive, with the justices determining that it must be considered from the perspective of a reasonable officer at the scene. The case stemmed from a 1984 incident after a North Carolina police officer saw a diabetic Dethorne Graham enter a convenience store for a sugary drink and hastily leave after deciding not to wait in line. Suspicious, the officer followed him and pulled his car over. The physical confrontation that followed left Graham with a broken foot, cuts on his wrist and an injured shoulder. He sued. The justices determined reasonable use of force must be judged “from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” In that 1989 case, Graham v. Connor, the court noted that officers “are often forced to make split-second judgments — in circumstances that are often tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving — about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”

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INDIO — It was before sunrise when California Highway Patrol Officer Miguel Guerrero spotted a bruised and cut-up man standing under an Interstate 10 overpass.

Robert Shirar had veered off the road, crashing through the guardrail and into the center median. The 1999 Ford F350 smashed into a second guardrail before spinning 180 degrees. The front passenger-side wheel flew off, landing 15 feet away.

Two CHP officers pulled up to the crash within minutes of a 4:56 a.m. 911 call from a passerby. Shirar stood under the Indio Boulevard overpass not far away. He had a 2-inch cut on the back of his head, and bruises and scratches from his forehead down to his legs.

The 32-year-old father of two tucked his hands into his pockets as the officers approached him, according to investigative documents obtained by The Desert Sun.

Then Shirar yelled out that the officers better shoot first or he would shoot them, Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner’s Sgt. Curtis James wrote in a briefing about the shooting.

Guerrero demanded that Shirar show his hands, the coroner’s account purports, but Shirar refused.

Shirar then “made an aggressive movement in the direction of Officer Guerrero,” James wrote.

Four minutes after arriving at the crash scene, Guerrero pulled the trigger of his .40-caliber Smith and Wesson.

When CHP arrived on the scene, there was no reason to believe Shirar was anything but the victim of a crash, though officers are trained to be on guard even in what seem to be routine calls. Before writing his account of what transpired that morning, James didn’t interview Guerrero, according to the report’s list of interviewees. Instead, he interviewed CHP officers who had responded to the scene.

Guerrero shot Shirar seven times — three times in the abdomen and once each in the right upper chest, right wrist, right finger and right leg.

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Shirar was unarmed, investigators admitted a month later, and fell to the ground, mortally wounded.

Guerrero called “shots fired” over his radio and requested emergency medical response. Then, with another trooper’s help, he handcuffed Shirar.

EMS responders told investigators that Shirar was combative but “deteriorated into pulseless electrical activity” on the way to Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage.

Over the past four years, most Coachella Valley police agencies have reported a declining number of use-of-force cases in nearly every category — baton use, dog bites, less-lethal weapons, shootings and stun guns.

But Shirar was one of four people shot to death in confrontations with Coachella Valley police last year. The Desert Sun reviewed 55 valley police shootings since 2000, and the only other year when as many were killed was 2007, also with four.

Under the state Public Records Act, The Desert Sun requested four years of use-of-force data from the desert’s law enforcement agencies. Cathedral City, Desert Hot Springs, Indio and Palm Springs provided numbers.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department — which oversees police services in Coachella, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage — provided its data on shootings and dog bites, as well as stun gun use for January through August 2012 only. It does not track data on other use-of-force incidents, two lieutenants said.

With only partial data, The Desert Sun found in its analysis that since 2009:

• Coachella Valley police and sheriff’s deputies reported at least 370 use-of-force cases. The majority of cases — 54 percent — involved Tasers or stun guns. The next highest, in order, were the use of batons, dog bites and shootings. That number would undoubtedly be higher if the sheriff’s department tracked all data.

• Indio — the valley’s largest city and police force — reported the most cases, 146 incidents, in the four-year time frame. Indio was followed by Palm Springs (102), Desert Hot Springs (43) and Cathedral City (40).

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• Last year, 75 incidents were reported, apparently the lowest total since 2009, although complete sheriff’s data would push that number higher.

• Nationwide, officers used force in 3.6 out of every 10,000 calls over a two-year period, according to the last-known comprehensive national study, published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2001. Valley police officers used force 3.04 times per 10,000 calls over the most recent two-year period.

• While stun guns were the No. 1 type of force used for every local police department in almost every year, stun gun use has fallen dramatically — from 83 cases in 2009 down to 25 cases last year. In late 2010, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals tightened standards for when an officer can reasonably use a stun gun after finding that a Coronado officer used excessive force by sending 1,200 volts into a shirtless, unarmed motorist who was stopped for a seatbelt violation.

• Departments are required to document use-of-force incidents internally, but California law does not govern how those records are tracked. In contrast, CHP is required by California law to collect reports from every police agency in the state when an officer or deputy is involved in a vehicle pursuit. No such law requires consistent definitions of force or standardized accounting of use of force.

Last week, eight months after Shirar was fatally shot on I-10, Shirar’s mother finally saw the officers’ versions of the events.

His mom, Bonnie Bohart, said she was “horrified” by the allegations against her son, who had a record with two misdemeanor convictions, neither of them violent.

She strongly disagrees with their version, arguing police are “justifying their inappropriate” shooting of her son on May 21, 2012.

“I’d be surprised if he even knew what he was saying after he hit the divide,” said Bohart, a nurse. “They should have gotten him medical attention and not a confrontation of any kind. None of it adds up.”

Officers across the nation train often for dangerous and sometimes life-threatening confrontations. Forty-nine officers were shot to death last year, and the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund says one officer is killed every 53 hours.

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No officer “is proud of having to kill somebody,” Palm Springs Police Officers’ Association President William Hutchinson said.

The sergeant is a 15-year veteran who has been in a fatal shooting.

“Look, force isn’t pretty. Using force on people sometimes is very ugly. What we do sometimes is very violent in nature,” Hutchinson said. “That doesn’t mean we’re wrong.”

How the shooting investigations work

In the moments after an officer shoots at someone, he is supposed to be led away from the scene. He will undergo criminal interviews and psychological evaluations and be placed on paid administrative leave.

While the officers’ agency evaluates whether policy was followed, a second agency — requested by the chief, and usually the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department or the district attorney’s office — investigates the shooting separately.

The Riverside County District Attorney’s office eventually reviews the cases to consider criminal culpability. There are few valley cases where an officer has been convicted for wrongdoing after a use of force:

• Then-district attorney’s investigator Daniel L. Riter, 55

at the time, fatally shot a Palm Desert man during a February 2002 confrontation outside the Coachella Valley Rescue Mission in Indio.

An investigator with the Child Abduction Unit, he was trying to take two children into custody. He argued he shot at Jesus Pena Herrera because Herrera was driving a truck toward him. Riter was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison.

• Former Desert Hot Springs Police Sgt. David Henderson pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor deprivation of rights charge for using a Taser on a handcuffed man in August 2004.

• Desert Hot Springs Police Sgt. Anthony Sclafani was sentenced last July to four years in federal prison, convicted of using excessive force and violating the civil rights of two people in two separate incidents in February 2005.

He fired his stun gun at a handcuffed man in the back of a patrol car, a years-long FBI investigation concluded. The next day, after a jailed woman banged on her cell door, Sclafani pepper-sprayed her in the face and then fired his stun gun at her.

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Geoffrey P. Alpert is a professor at the University of South Carolina who has researched high-risk police activities for more than 25 years. Alpert has written more than 100 journal articles and his work is cited by the National Institute of Justice.

While officers can legally use force on someone, it’s not true that the law gives blanket protection to an officer in a shooting, Alpert said.

A good investigation digs into the pasts of both the suspected criminal and the officer involved, he said. A thorough examination of evidence at the scene also is key.

“It’s like anything else. Some officers are going to tell the truth, and others are going to say ‘I didn’t see it,’ or ‘I was looking away,’ or ‘I don’t know,’” Alpert said.

With no national standard on defining force — let alone consistent requirements for reporting it — it can be difficult to find reliable data and valid reports, he said.

The investigation into each case can take months to “peel the layers back,” and should focus on what exactly someone did to make the officer feel threatened, Alpert said.

“I don’t think anyone wants to kill anyone else. I don’t think they got up in the morning and said ‘I’m going to go kill someone,’ so I think there was something that happened,” he said. “Did they misread it? Did they misinterpret it? Or was it a real serious threat of bodily harm or death? That’s what the investigation takes so long to figure out.”

The use of deadly force draws intense criticism in part because it can come down to the testimony of the officer involved.

“When it’s a he-said, she-said, the officers are going to have to come up with something. ‘He pulled a shiny object.’ Look, if you put me in 50 situations, I can come up with good excuses why I killed someone. These guys aren’t fools,” Alpert said.

Hutchinson agrees there are some “bad apples” who abuse their power or who lie about the investigation after a use-of-force report. But those cases are rare, and most departments are the first to step up and call for prosecution of abusive officers, he said.

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“None of us want to see a rogue cop who’s out there violating rights. That’s not a cop. That’s not somebody who swore their oath to their community and to the badge,” Hutchinson said. “Those are criminals who got through the system and happen to be wearing a badge.”

'Reasonable force' standard

Cathedral City, Desert Hot Springs, Indio and Palm Springs share a policy on use of force, which is labeled a “critical concern.”

“The department recognizes and respects the value of all human life and dignity without prejudice to anyone,” the policy states. “Vesting officers with the authority to use reasonable force and to protect the public welfare requires monitoring, evaluation and a careful balancing of all interests.”

Using force is “one of the most critical responsibilities” officers accept when they choose their career, Palm Springs Police Sgt. Mike Kovaleff said. It can be the most dangerous parts of the job.

He pointed repeatedly to a Supreme Court ruling that determined use of force must be judged “from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”

In that 1989 case, Graham v. Connor, the court noted that officers “are often forced to make split-second judgments in circumstances that are often tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving.”

“Unfortunately, there is no textbook way to handle each incident because all situations vary,” Kovaleff said. “The actions or inactions of suspects are always an unknown and are forever changing.”

Cathedral City police reported only three use-of-force incidents last year — two Taser reports and an open hand, when an officer uses his hand or body to gain compliance.

The unusually low number of incidents is partly “luck of the draw,” but largely because officers are taught extensively how to recognize and solve problems and “not necessarily just jump to a Taser or some other type of force,” Capt. Chuck Robinson said.

“We deal with intoxicated people, drugged people, people who are irrational — and I think that no matter what, we still have a responsibility to talk to people and see if we can actually solve some of these situations without having to resort to any use of force,” Robinson said. “Sometimes we can do that, and sometimes we can’t.”

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The stakes are high — officers can face federal prison for a civil rights violation — and sometimes officers hesitate and put themselves in dangerous situations even when they have the legal right to use force, Hutchinson said.

“You’ve got to remember that, as a society, we tell our police officers we want you to go out there and protect us and here are the tools we want you to do that with,” he said.

“What do we expect from our police officers as a society? Do you want the police officer who shows up, who doesn’t use force, who just says, ‘OK, yes, ma’m, yes sir’? Or do you want the officers who can prevent chaos and disorder?”

Shirar's newborn daughter

Robert Shirar died on his one-year wedding anniversary. Shortly after his death, his widow found out she was pregnant.

Their baby girl, Alexandria, was born on Tuesday.

Tonya Shirar missed a call from her husband at 4:33 a.m. the Monday he was killed, 31 minutes before he was fatally shot.

“I wish there was a voicemail,” his widow said. “I just had only one call from him. I kind of wish he would have kept calling me. I might have woken up.”

Shirar grew up with two brothers and one sister in Newport. Family and friends called him a personable and outgoing family man.

He went to work in 2007 for the family business, Oso Home Care Inc., and worked as director of business development for the Irvine-based home health care company.

Shirar pleaded guilty to a January 2000 misdemeanor conviction of receiving stolen property.

While still on probation, Shirar pleaded guilty in 2003 to a single misdemeanor of insufficient funds and was sentenced to three years of probation. The latter stemmed from a dispute between Shirar and his parents, his mother said.

He was arrested Aug. 25, 2011, by a Banning police officer on a misdemeanor DUI charge. He pleaded not guilty and was awaiting trial in the case when he was killed.

The family calls it an unfair arrest, that he was recovering from surgery and was sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car while his wife walked to get gas.

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The CHP version of his death reads like a man who is committing suicide by a cop, his family said.

During their investigation, Indio police questioned family about a cigarette lighter in Shirar's truck that looked like a small pistol and Oxycontin he took after a serious car crash in 2010, family and friends have told The Desert Sun.

In reality, his family argues, Shirar would never have wanted to die. He was a dedicated father to his 7-year-old daughter in Arizona and his 11-year-old stepdaughter in Orange, they said.

Shirar and his wife had been visiting fertility doctors and were hopeful she was finally pregnant.

His daughter in Arizona was arriving in days to spend the summer with him.

“Robert was a great father to his two daughters,” Tonya Shirar said. “He would not leave them or the one on the way. He wanted a big family.”

Indio police received the Dec. 6 coroner’s review of the death and are now finalizing their investigation into Shirar’s shooting, police spokesman Ben Guitron said. Investigators expect the district attorney’s office to begin its review later this month.

Prosecutors will then decide whether or not the officer was within his legal rights to shoot.

In the meantime, Shirar’s family has created a “Remember Robert Shirar” website and a Facebook page called “Jadyn’s Daddy” to collect memories and photos for his children.

Shirar’s widow and his mother have both hired attorneys and are considering filing legal claims. They call his death nothing short of a “brutal murder.”

“They took a life. They didn’t save a life,” Bohart said.

“There is something terribly wrong with these people. How do they even look at themselves in the mirror in the morning?”